Archives for the month of: February, 2019
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California: Public Advocates Asks Whether GoV. Newsom Will Deliver On Equity, Funding, and Accountability

By dianeravitch
February 14, 2019 //
7

 

 

Statement by John Affeldt on Governor Newsom’s State of the State Education Priorities

 

On the occasion of Governor Gavin Newsom’s first State of the State address, Public Advocates is issuing the following statement commenting on the Governor’s remarks on public education. Quotes from the statement are to be attributed to John Affeldt, Public Advocates Managing Attorney for Education.

On funding for California’s public schools:

We are thrilled to have a governor finally willing to have the long overdue conversation about sufficient funding for our public schools. The Local Control Funding Formula has made school funding much more equitable but did not address funding adequacy. Despite being the world’s fifth largest economy, California drags along the bottom of states in per pupil expenditures and has fewer adults per student ratios than all but two other states. From Los Angeles to Oakland to Sacramento, our schools are having to choose unfairly between paying teachers living wages, or delivering core services like reasonable class sizes, nurses, counselors and librarians or paying extra attention to students with the greatest needs. These are necessities our public schools must provide to close persistent opportunity and achievement gaps, and which can be met by using the resources our wealthy state possesses. We have offered thoughts for reaching funding adequacy over the years, most recently in an October EdSource op-ed, and we look forward to being part of the urgent conversation on how to fully and fairly fund our schools.

 

On the appointment of Linda Darling-Hammond to the State Board of Education:

Governor Newsom could not have made a better appointment to the State Board of Education than Dr. Linda Darling-Hammond. Dr. Darling-Hammond is the foremost authority on equity and teacher quality in our public schools in the country. More than a brilliant academic she also has shown herself an astute policymaker and public administrator in her time advising the Obama Campaign, Governor Brown and serving as Chair of the state’s Commission on Teacher Credentialing for the past six years. We look forward to working with Dr. Darling-Hammond on the State Board and to seeing her influence that body to make even greater strides to improve the educational system for all California students.

 

On plans to increase accountability and transparency in public education, including charter schools:

We also applaud Governor Newsom’s proposal to increase accountability and transparency in public education. For starters, we need a much clearer picture of how $6 billion in supplemental and concentration dollars for high-need students are being spent by districts and schools. Murkiness in charter spending is even worse. In August 2018, Public Advocates published the first study of how well charter schools are performing in terms of being transparent and accountable for public dollars in their required Local Control Accountability Plans (LCAP). We found a shocking lack of public accountability for hundreds of millions of dollars reviewed in the sample. A third of charters failed to even present an LCAP at all. Of those that did, only $15.8 million out of $48.6 million dollars supposed to be dedicated to low-income, English learner and foster students were identified as having been expended and none of those dollars were actually properly justified as having been lawfully spent to serve high need students. We look forward to working with the Administration to further strengthen charter school accountability.

 

###

 

Public Advocates Inc. is a nonprofit law firm and advocacy organization that challenges the systemic causes of poverty and racial discrimination by strengthening community voices in public policy and achieving tangible legal victories advancing education, housing, transportation equity, and climate justice. www.publicadvocates.org 

Categories Accountability, California, Charter Schools, Equity, Funding

Los Angeles: Will LAUSD Close Down Failing Charter Schools?

By dianeravitch
February 13, 2019 //
8

Carl J. Petersen wonders if the LAUSD school board will hold failing charter schools accountable?

Predictably, it turns out that the charterization of the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) did not provide the miracle that was promised. The District has the highest number of charter schools in the country, with approximately 18% of its students in these publicly funded private schools. In the just-released list of 110 underperforming schools in the LAUSD, 20%were independent charter schools. Are we diverting $591.7 million from our public schools to get basically the same results?….

The list of underperforming charters includes schools run by large, influential charter chains like PUC, Kipp, Green Dot, and Camino Nuevo (whose chief of operations, Allison Greenwood Bajracharya, is running in the District 5 special election). This will make any attempt to hold these schools accountable extremely difficult. Will the Board put “Kids First” and face this opposition head on?

 

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Failure, Los Angeles, Privatization

Camden, NJ: No Miracle There!

By dianeravitch
February 13, 2019 //
9

 

A few months ago, the New York Times published a very credulous article about the “successful” state takeover of Camden, New Jersey. This was surprising because the superintendent who took charge had never run a school or a district before.  Age 32, he had worked for Joel Klein.

Jersey Jazzman was doubtful. There has never been a successful state takeover.

So he waited until  the state audit was completed. And his doubts were confirmed.

Here is JJ’s post about Camden:

http://jerseyjazzman.blogspot.com/2019/02/the-failure-of-state-control-in-camden.html

The so-called Renaissance schools in Camden were supposed to take all neighborhood kids. They don’t.

He writes:

“Before we dive into this, let’s step back and recall some history:
“Way back in 2012 — back when Chris Christie was making teacher bashing fashionable — a couple of low-level bureaucrats in the NJ Department of Education came up with a plan for Camden’s Schools. The idea was to take power away from the local school board — which didn’t have much power anyway as it had been subject to the direction of a state fiscal monitor since 2006 — and shift control to the Christie administration and the State Board of Education. This would allow charter schools to flourish while CCPS schools were shuttered.
“It’s worth noting that the guys who came up with the plan were paid by California billionaire Eli Broad, who was the patron of then-Acting Commissioner of Education Chris Cerf. The next year, Christie went all-in on Camden and had the state take overt the district. The excuse was that Camden was such a failure, the state really had no choice.
“Christie proceeded to go out and get a very young fellow to be his new superintendent. Paymon Rouhanifard had, at best, six years of total experiencein education, but apparently that’s all he needed to take on arguably the toughest school leadership job in the state.
Rouhanifard left CCPS last year; when the Auditor discusses the state of Camden’s schools, he’s discussing Rouhanifard’s legacy. I’ve already gone over the issues with the Renaissance schools’ enrollments; let’s look at what else the Auditor found in Camden.”
What else did the audit find?
Experienced administrators fired and replaced by incompetent managers. Lost or misspent millions. Lack of financial controls.
Jersey Jazzman concludes:
“The idea that state control is the only solution for “failing” urban schools is built on a nasty bedrock of racism. But on top of that: State control of schools clearly doesn’t work.
“I know credulous reporters love to eat up pre-digested talking points about soaring graduation rates and skyrocketing test scores to justify these state interventions. But when you look at these metrics properly, it turns out the grad rates are simply part of overall trends (more here), and the small bumps in test scores are best understood as artifacts from changing the tests, not as real improvements in teaching and learning.
“Camden deserves better. It needs experienced, competent leadership that can properly manage the district’s finances. It needs adequate and equitable funding. It needs a system of school governance that allows all local stakeholders to have a say in how the system is operated — just like almost every other district in the state.
“State control has failed in Camden. It’s time to admit it and move on to something better.”

This is the Times’ article:

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Corporate Reform, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Education Reform, New Jersey, Privatization

Denver: The Ugly Story Behind the Teachers’ Strike

By dianeravitch
February 13, 2019 //
18

Jeannie Kaplan served two term on the elected Denver school board. I asked her to explain the issues behind the strike.

 

PCOPS, PENSIONS, and PICKETLINES

 

She writes:

 

PCOPS, PENSIONS, and PICKETLINES

Posted on by Jeannie Kaplan

 

On April 24, 2008 the Denver Public Schools agreed to borrow $750 million dollars from some of America’s top financial institutions for its outstanding pension debt. As I write this blog this morning February 12, 2019 Denver’s teachers have entered the second day of their first strike in 25 years. The amount of money being contested is somewhere less than one-half of one percent of the overall DPS budget.  0.04%.  Less than $10 million out of $1.4 billion.  The following tells some of the complicated story that connects these two events.

The $750 million taxpayer debt was divided this way: $300 million was to pay back already existing pension debt, $400 million was to fully fund the DPS retirement fund.  The remaining $50 million went to legal and financial fees. By the time this transaction was “fixed out” in 2013 a veritable Who’s Who in the Wall Street world was involved:  RBC Capital Markets, Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan, Citibank, Wells, Fargo, Bank of America. Part of the incentive to borrow this money was so DPS’ stand alone retirement fund could join the statewide retirement fund (Colorado Public Employees Retirement Association or PERA for short) which would in turn allow for more employee mobility into and out of DPS and would reduce DPS’ annual retirement contributions which would in turn provide more money for classrooms.  Because of previous financial miscalculations DPS was paying more per pupil for its retirement fund than any other school district in the state. Had this deal not been executed, the dollars paid to banks and lawyers could have been put directly into the DPS retirement fund itself. The DPS Superintendent at the time:  Michael Bennet. The Chief Operating Officer: Tom Boasberg.

Bennet and Boasberg came from the business world and were heralded as financial wizards. (They were boyhood friends growing up in Washington, D.C. together). Bennet had worked for billionaire Phil Anschutz and had already demonstrated a skepticism toward public pensions.  Boasberg arrived at DPS from Level 3 Communications, “an American multinational telecommunications and Internet service provider” where he was a mergers and acquisition guy.  Long story short they, along with bankers and lawyers concocted this very complicated and risky transaction using taxpayer money.  They were convinced that despite what was happening in the financial world at the time, DPS was going to save millions of dollars in pension costs.

Remember back to 2008. And remember we are talking about public, not private, money.  In February the auction rate securities froze.  In March Bear Stearns went under.  There were many indicators that something big could be going on in the world financial markets.  Nevertheless, in April the DPS board was encouraged to proceed with the high risk transaction which relied on the weekly LIBOR rate (it is the primary benchmark, along with the Euribor, for short-term interest rates around the world. Libor rates are calculated for five currencies and seven borrowing periods ranging from overnight to one year and are published each business day by Thomson Reuters.), swaps, (A swap is a derivative in which two counterparties exchange cash flows of one party’s financial instrument for those of the other party’s financial instrument. The benefits in question depend on the type of financial instruments involved.), bonds that were auctioned weekly.  And here is the headline from that deal.  In 10 years that $750 million loan has ballooned into twice as much debt  ($1.8 BILLION) and only for the past two years has the district begun paying any principal.  And simultaneously,  Bennet and Boasberg were able to convince the Colorado legislature that DPS should get the equivalent of “pre-payment” credit to deduct the PCOPs fees and interest from what would have been their normal pension contributions.  Because of these actions DPS employees have witnessed their pension fund drop about 20% from fully funded (100%) on January 1, 2010 to a little under 80% funded in June 30, 2018. But as Bennet and Boasberg would say as this defunding is occurring, “we are making our legal contributions, ” to which one must add, “Legal, but is it ethical?”

This story has become very relevant today because after 15 months of negotiations the district and the teachers have been unable to reach an agreement. Denver’s teachers have gone on strike over a compensation system called ProComp (Professional Compensation).  And the ProComp fight comes back to the pension.

In 2005 Denver voters approved a $25 million tax  (adjusted for inflation) for teacher pay-for-performance incentives.  A few thousand dollars was awarded for teachers who worked in hard to serve schools and taught hard to teach subjects.  The awarded dollars ($500-$2500) was intended to permanently raise base salaries.  It was reliable raise and it was PENSIONABLE.

In 2008 – hum, is this a coincidence? – the ProComp “bonus” went from a completely base building system to a yearly one-time bonus system.  And to further complicate matters, new bonus criteria (based primarily on high-stakes testing) have since been added. The result has been teachers cannot tell how much they will be making from year to year.  Some have said they can’t even tell how much they will make from paycheck to paycheck. Oh, and of course, these bonuses do not contribute to a teacher’s PENSIONABLE income resulting in…less retirement money  for retiring teachers, and simultaneously smaller demands on a dwindling pension fund.

While all this business bonus mess has been imposed in Denver, surrounding school districts have far surpassed Denver’s base pay scale, resulting in very high teacher turnover for DPS and a dwindling number of long serving professionals. Teachers are retiring earlier, teachers are leaving the district, and sadly teachers are leaving the profession. And because Denver is the quintessential reform district, DPS has been very welcoming to the reform idea of hiring short term, unlicensed educators with non-traditional training.  Think six week training programs.  The result of all this brilliance: fewer long serving employees resulting in less demand on a pension fund.  So the conflation of financial wizardry and education reform has hit Denver: businessmen Bennet and Boasberg take over the finances of a public school district, concoct a complicated and risky scenario during an unstable financial time, get the legislature to allow the defunding of the pension, implement a bonus based pay system to replace base-building, and voila – a strike by Denver’s teachers for a fair, reliable, sustainable pay system.

One more important headline. ProComp bonuses for teachers range from $500-$3000 per category per year. Last month a list of administrative bonuses without a rubric as to how the money has been awarded became available:  the current COO (Boasberg’s first job in DPS) received a $34,000 (!) bonus on top of his $198,000 salary, an “IMO executive principal” got $36,900 on top of his/her $130,000.  An IMO executive principal is the newest layer of reform administration.  He/she oversees a network of innovation schools (non union schools overseen by the district) and makes two to three times as much as a DPS teacher.  There are approximately 10 such positions with each person gathering around $20,000 in bonuses. These bonuses are not part of the ProComp agreement but rather come out of the DPS general fund.  Just imagine.  You could save almost half of the 8 million dollars they two sides are bickering over if you just eliminated these positions and the bonuses.

We must never end any story about Denver Public Schools without a reference to educational outcomes, for isn’t the first priority of a public education system educating its students? After 15 years of education reform brought by Michael Bennet and Tom Boasberg, 42% of Denver’s students are proficient in English Language Arts and 32% proficient in math.  Bennet and Boasberg  financial actions have also contributed to the doubling of the pension debt, and their policies have resulted in the first teacher strike in 25 years in Denver.  Quite a legacy left by the boys from D.C.

 

 

Categories Colorado, Denver, Merit pay, Pensions

Defending the Early Years on Academic Rigor in Kindergarten: NO!

By dianeravitch
February 13, 2019 //
23

Defending the Early Years

Response to Le, Schaack et al. study, “Advanced Content Coverage at Kindergarten: Are There Trade-Offs Between Academic Achievement and Social-Emotional Skills?”

https://www.chalkbeat.org/posts/us/2019/01/24/advanced-academic-content-kindergarten-study/

 

Advanced academics in kindergarten?

Questionable science and a misleading news story

 

“New research says the kids are all right” in kindergartens that emphasize advanced academics, according to a January 24 headline in Chalkbeat.We strongly disagree.

 

The study in question, published online by the American Educational Research Journalon Jan. 4, 2019, has severe limitations, and it is based on so many questionable assumptions that no meaningful conclusion can be drawn from it. At the same time, reports of its supposed findings, like the Chalkbeatstory, muddy the waters of a vital conversation about how young children learn. Even worse, this problematic study and the uncritical reporting of it are likely to be used to defend pernicious policies and practices that almost all early childhood educators agree are hurting children.

 

The authors of the study themselves acknowledge three serious limitations in their work. First, it is a correlational study that says nothing about causation. In other words, the positive outcomes that they claim to see may be the result of factors other than the ones they tried to measure. Second, the measure they used to calculate the amount of time devoted to teaching advanced skills in the classroom was subject to a high level of uncertainty. And third, the very definition of “advanced” has widely varying meanings, and the researchers had no way of knowing how such “advanced” content was actually being taught.

 

In fact, this study is flawed in even more troubling ways:

 

  1. The tests that were used to measure changes in children’s achievement and social-emotional skills were given in the same year: “At kindergarten,” the authors write, “there were two waves of data collection, with the first wave taking place during the fall and the second wave taking place during spring.” That is, there was no follow-up beyond the kindergarten year. The authors fail to acknowledge that long-term studies have shown that gains from early academics disappear and in some cases reverse themselves by third grade.

 

That drilling children on content can boost test scores in the same year (which happened here only to a moderate extent) is thus unsurprising and means little. The authors avoid mentioning that, while their study was just correlational, other experimental research contradicts their conclusion. The most rigorous of these was the High/Scope Comparative Curriculum Study, which followed students to age 23 and found powerful evidence of the negative effects of early academics—evidence that did not clearly emerge until years later.

 

  1. The authors based their conclusions on kindergartners’ test scores in math and English language arts. They note that, in the standards-and-testing-based “reform” movement of the 1980s and 1990s, “standardized testing was not mandated until the third grade.” But they don’t say why. The reason is that testing experts universally agree that standardized test scores have virtually no meaning before third grade. According to the findings of the National Research Council’s definitive “High Stakes” study, basing educational policymaking on kindergarten test scores is essentially a form of educational malpractice.

 

  1. In their review of the research on early academics, the authors make no mention of the fact that no study has ever shown that learning to read at an early age is correlated with long-term academic success. Indeed, children who learn to read at age six or seven are just as likely to become devoted lifelong readers as those who learn at four or five. Shouldn’t lifelong learning, not short-term test results, be our goal as teachers?

 

  1. The study found a correlation between academic training and social-emotional development—but only with math, not language arts, and these social-emotional gains were seen almost entirely in the children who started kindergarten with the lowest math achievement scores. The authors offer no convincing explanation for this odd, counterintuitive finding. It suggests to us the presence of a confounding variable unrelated to the hypothesis that advanced academic training of little children would improve their social-emotional well-being.

 

  1. A close look at how this study measured social-emotional outcomes reveals what may be its most serious flaw. All the social skills and behavioral effects were rated by the same teachers who taught the academic content, not by independent evaluators (let alone by independent evaluators blind to the type of instruction).

 

“Of 12 social or behavioral measures, there was a statistically significant (and quite small) effect on only three,” writes education policy analyst Alfie Kohn. “And with respect to kids’ aggression, anger, sadness, anxiety, etc., there was no short-term effect, positive or negative, as a result of teaching academic skills for an unspecified length of time using unspecified methods—according to the teachers themselves.”

 

Behaviors that would get you a low social-emotional skills score in this study—like not putting your toys away promptly or acting out—are more likely to occur in play. Those that would get you a high score—like completing tasks and following rules—are more likely to occur in a  highly structured academic classroom. With this rating system, therefore, children in kindergartens with a lot of free play might, for that very reason, look like they have lower social-emotional skills than children in kindergartens where behavior is more rigidly structured and controlled by the teacher.

 

The authors fail to acknowledge what every wise teacher understands: kids learn to be better adjusted through play. “Those kids in lessons, with less play,” writes Boston College Research Professor Peter Gray, “don’t have the opportunity to exhibit the kinds of behaviors that (a) would lead to low social-emotional scores and (b) would provide the experiences needed to gain social-emotional competence. If we rigidly control children they may look more competent than if we allow them free play, but we also prevent them from learning to control themselves through experience.”

 

The authors’ conclusion, “that advanced academic content can be taught without compromising children’s social-emotional skills,” is not just unsupported by their own evidence. It is irresponsible in light of convincing contradictory findings that they have completely ignored.

 

This study will undoubtedly be welcomed by the corporations producing new academically oriented curricula and tests for young children. It is likely to further the proliferation of high-pressure academics and the loss of free play and child-initiated learning in kindergarten—trends that have already led some of our most experienced and talented early childhood teachers to quit the profession in frustration and despair.

 

———-

 

This statement was prepared by Defending the Early Years in consultation with early childhood researchers, practitioners, and advocates. We are especially grateful for the assistance of Alfie Kohn, Joan Almon, and Professor Peter Gray. For more information, contact Geralyn Bywater McLaughlin (geralynbywater@gmail.com) or Blakely Bundy (blakelybundy@comcast.net).

 

https://www.deyproject.org/rapid-response-network/defending-the-early-years-response-to-le-schaack-et-al-study-advanced-content-coverage-at-kindergarten-are-there-trade-offs-between-academic-achievement-and-social-emotional-skills

Categories Childhood, Pre-K, K

California: Gov. Newsom Selects Linda Darling-Hammond as Chair of State Board of Education

By dianeravitch
February 12, 2019 //
56

 

 

Governor Gavin Newsom announced that Linda Darling-Hammond is his choice to be leader of the State Board of Education. 

She is a distinguished scholar who is deeply knowledgeable about equity, teaching and learning.

Categories California

Trump in El Paso

By dianeravitch
February 12, 2019 //
32

 

A report from the Boston Globe daily news summary:

 

While you were sleeping: At his El Paso rally, after Trump whipped up the crowd against journalists once again by calling them “dishonest” and “fake news,” one of his supporters physically attacked journalists in the press area, violently shoving several people, especially a BBC cameraman who almost fell off the raised platform and whose camera the attacker tried to smash while shouting “F— the media.” He was restrained by other reporters until security took him out of the arena. And then Trump had the gall to ask the cameraman if he was all right.

Please don’t be surprised; physical attacks on journalists are inevitable in the wake of Trump’s outrageous and dangerous verbal attacks on the media as “enemies of the people.” Trump supporters routinely spit on, swear at, and make obscene gestures to reporters at Trump rallies. The publisher of The New York Times has made two appeals to Trump in person to stop the destructive language, to no avail. It’s inevitable that some of Trump’s mindless minions will believe him and act accordingly.

As for the rest of the taxpayer-funded campaign rally, Trump lied his waythrough his speech once again. He said the arena where he spoke held 8,000 people (it holds 6,500) and that the local fire department had allowed 10,000 people inside (it didn’t, especially since that would be unlawful and pretty stupid). He repeated his falsehood that crime in El Paso had plunged the minute a wall was built on the border (it didn’t; it had been low for many years), that big sections of his wall were already being built (existing fencing is being shored up), that a wall will stop drugs from “pouring” over the border (the vast majority of illegal drugs are smuggled in vehicles at ports of entry), and that a wall will stop MS-13 gang members (most MS-13 members who are arrested are US citizens).

My favorite was his claim that Democrats want to get rid of cows. I got nothin’ here.

Just so you know, he’s quite annoyed that fact checkers keep publishing the truth, so he now has labeled them as “fake news” as well. They had better start watching their back, too.

Categories Education Reform

Gary Rubinstein: Did TFA Take a Position on the Teachers’ Strikes?

By dianeravitch
February 12, 2019 //
10

Gary Rubinstein heard that Teach for America corps members were persuaded not to take part in teachers’ strikes. 

But did they stay neutral?

They are scabs if they don’t strike. They risk their Americorps funding if they do.

What do they do?

What do you think?

 

 

Categories Denver, Education Reform, Los Angeles, Teach for America

Steven Singer: Rahm Emanuel Did Not Apologize for the Damage He Did as a Reformer

By dianeravitch
February 12, 2019 //
6

Steven Singer nails Rahm Emanuel’s false apology. Rahm claims he is no longer a Reformer yet continues to think he has to get tough on somebody to produce the test scores he wants. When I visited the Washington Post recently, I heard Rahm discuss his great education successes in Chicago, in conversation with the woman he appointed as superintendent of schools (talk about softball exchanges!). Not a word was said about his historic and vicious decision to close 50 public schools in one  day, all of them located in communities of color. The gossip was that he was trying out for the next Secretary of Education role. His name will live in education history and it will remind us of his terrible actions as a privatizer, a hater of public schools, and a man who holds teachers in contempt.

 

 

Rahm Emanuel’s recent op-ed in The Atlantic may be one of the dumbest things I have ever read.

 

The title “I Used to Preach the Gospel of Education Reform. Then I Became the Mayor” seems to imply Emanuel has finally seen the light.

 

The outgoing Chicago Mayor USED TO subscribe to the radical right view that public schools should be privatized, student success should be defined almost entirely by standardized testing, teachers should be stripped of union protections and autonomy and poor black and brown people have no right to elect their own school directors.

 

But far from divorcing any of this Reagan-Bush-Trump-Clinton-Obama crap, he renews his vows to it.

 

This isn’t an apologia. It’s rebranding.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Chicago, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Emanuel, Rahm, Privatization, Testing

North Carolina: Voucher Fund Grows by Millions Each Year with Not Enough Students Wanting Vouchers

By dianeravitch
February 12, 2019 //
7

Questions for Betsy DeVos: What happens if you offer vouchers and there are few takers?  Why increase the supply when the demand is small?

The Tea Party Republicans who won control of the North Carolina legislature believed that families across the state were aching to get into a religious school, so they created a voucher program and promised it would grow larger every year to meet the demand that was expected. But the funds are running far ahead of demand, and millions have been appropriated for vouchers that no one wants. 

It is encouraging to see that even Republican legislators realize what a stupid thing it is to provide millions that go unspent when the public schools attended by nearly 90% of students are underfunded.

State lawmakers keep adding money for North Carolina’s Opportunity Scholarship program, which sends low-income kids to private schools, even though there aren’t enough takers to spend the money it already has.

With millions going unspent each year, the state budget approved in 2017 guarantees the voucher program will get a $10 million bump each year for the next decade.

That needs to stop, a key Republican lawmaker says.

“We’ve got other needs,” said Rep. Craig Horn of Union County, who chairs the House Education Appropriations Committee. “We need to right-size this thing.

The two-year state budget approved in 2017 cited “the critical need in this State to provide opportunity for school choice for North Carolina students” and spelled out Opportunity Scholarship budgets that would start at $44.8 million in 2017-18 and top out at $144.8 million in 2027-28.

When that plan was approved, the fund had already left a total of $12.6 million on the table during its first three years, numbers provided to The Charlotte Observer show. Even in 2017-18, when a cap on administrative expenses was lifted and that bill more than tripled, the fund used only about $29.5 million of the $34.8 million available.

Any unused money rolls over for use in the voucher program the following year, then reverts to the state’s General Fund if it remains as surplus for a second year, according to the state’s budget legislation….

Charles Jeter, a former state representative who now serves as the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools government relations coordinator, says that the history of unspent voucher money gives lawmakers an easy way to free up some money for public education. Based on numbers he had gotten from the Opportunity Scholarship web page, he reported that the program had used only $28 million of $45 million allotted for the 2017-18 school year.

“So why do taxpayers across NC need to increase the funding for these vouchers by another $10 million when we’re only spending about 63% of the money now?” he wrote in his weekly “Jetergram” email.

Read more here: https://www.charlotteobserver.com/news/local/education/article225933910.html#storylink=cpy
Categories Education Reform, Failure, North Carolina
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